Muhammad Masud Dihati

Dihati, Muhammad Masud 

Year of birth unknown; died 1948. Iranian writer.

Dihati was one of the founders of the modernist trend in Persian literature. In the trilogy Pastimes of Night and Day (1932), In Search of a Living (1932), and The Loveliest of Creations (1934) and the novel The Flowers That Grow in Hell (1942-46) Dihati affirms, in the existentialist vein, man’s powerlessness in the face of the future. The language of his novels consists of literary stylization, with elements of the vernacular. His dialogues and descriptions quite often contain slang expressions. In the 1940’s, Dihati published the nationalist newspaper Mardom-e emruz, which was known for its attacks on the USSR and the democratic movement in Iran.

WORKS

In S. Nafisi, Shahkarha-yi nasr-i Farsi-i mu’asir, vol. 2. Tehran, 1332 A. H. (1953).

REFERENCES

Sovremennyi Iran: Spravochnik. Moscow, 1957.
Braginskii, I. S., and D. S. Komissarov. Persidskaia literatura. Moscow, 1963.